Welcome back to the podcast. I’m very happy that you’re here. And if this is your first time listening Hey, I’m Daisy, and I’m the founder of the Elegance Collective (previously the Elegance Handbook). And the last episode was the first episode that I recorded and three months have passed since I recorded the previous one. What happened? What caused the silence?
When I started the Elegance Handbook in 2020, the idea was just to share about my own experiences and at the time I was not yet a certified image consultant, certified adequate consultant. I wasn’t a certified life coach either. And I hadn’t gone to the University of Cambridge for my MBA. So a lot has changed over the last four years. And also when I started I was at a zero and now we are over 90,000 women, that is, Instagram followers. And then there’s also people in the email list. And these people already bought the books and what has gradually happened over the years is I realised more and more that I wanted to build something that is for community because I feel like community is something that is very important, especially in this modern world where a lot of people are online, but they don’t have community.
And then secondly, I felt like the name Handbook was no longer enough to sort of encapsulate what I had to offer. And sometimes when you get the inclination to sort of pivot and go into a new direction, it can be very hard to do this, especially since we become attached to the things that we’ve built from scratch to the things that we’ve grown by some times. The calling is in a completely different direction. And so I remember back in September of 2023, I had changed the name of the brand from elegance handbook, against collective and then I sort of got feedback from a couple of people who said no, really like the handbook itself. It sort of sounds cooler. And I said, Okay, let me go back to it. But then deep down in my heart, the seeds that had been planted for the collective was still there. And so in March of 2024, I actually made the pivot to make it the collective.
Honestly speaking, there is a lot that I don’t know about the direction that I’m taking, but I’m trusting and believing that God who gave me this information to go in a different direction is going to lead me in a different path. And he’s going to make the brand much more fuller and much more transformative for other women. The handbook explains the change for the handbook. And this was not the purpose of this episode.
So we’re going to quickly jump into what I wanted to speak about today. And this is not a scripted, sort of episode podcast. And essentially, it’s the message that I feel I have received concerning what it means to level up and what I mean by this is, usually when we talk about levelling up is about wanting to be better, but slowly have come to realise is wanting to be better relative to others. And this is a trap that a lot of us fall into and a lot of us sort of think is the correct way to approach a level up and when I say level up is basically just making your life better in terms of habits making your life better in terms of the relationships that you have, in terms of the effort that you put into your life, making it better. But what I’ve noticed is that the inspiration for a lot of women is wanting to be like other women. Because it’s one thing to be inspired and it’s another to compare, and then to want what other people have.
And this This is something that became very clear to me based on my own life experience. One of the people who really inspired me at the very beginning to level up is a lady who is very ambitious, who is very, let’s say diligent at the thing that she has been called to do. And what I realised over time is that I was following what she was doing and there was losing sight with what had been given to me. And when I got this insight, I started to backtrack and sort of think, Okay, what really is for me, what do I want to do with the next steps that I have to take? Not looking at her but looking at the gifts that had already been given and looking at the resources that have already been given and looking at the capabilities that I have from within myself. And this completely changed the direction that I was headed to.
And I started thinking a lot about the women who follow my work and the women who sort of look at other people who do work very similar to mine, and they keep thinking I need to do ABC like this other person. And what I feel God has made clear to me or what I feel I’m starting to see more clearly is that loving app has to be something that edifies what you already have and amplifies what you already have as opposed to taking away from what you already have. I’m gonna give a few examples for this.
So let’s say for example, you have a you have a relationship or you’re in a relationship and this relationship with someone who earns a decent amount of money. Let’s say this person for the purposes of this podcast, and 80k Right, annually, and 80k US dollars, just so that we are on the same baseline here or let’s say even 100k US dollars and you come on online and you see people are saying oh I’m dating a million now or I’m dating a deca-millionaire or on dating a billionaire. And suddenly something that was beautiful this is your relationship starts to feel hollow and starts to feel like maybe I can do better. Maybe there is other people out there who can provide a lot more than this person and you lose sight of the fact that this person provides in many other different ways and that already you are above average in many respects and when you hold a doubt like this by a desire that truly is not aligned with your life.
What then happens is that you start to value less and less the good relationship that you have. The point that I’m making here is if you leave this relationship and go in search of someone who has more money and who probably does not treat you in a good way who probably does not value you because they have more women at their disposal versus this person who loves you and wants a decent amount of money to sustain with you and your family. If you do eventually decide to have a family. What you lose is a lot more than you realise.
And a lot of women have this discontent with perfectly fine relationships and because they listen to other people who say Oh, you can do better. But you don’t know where this other person whose thing you can do better is coming from and you don’t know what context they’re living in. Maybe they live surrounded by millionaires. And for them, the baseline is very different from yours. And if you decide to go in this direction, then you ruin a completely good relationship because you’re searching for something that someone else has that was not given to you that is not aligned with your life or your lifestyle. And you let go of a perfectly good relationship because you wanted what another person has this is what I mean that you can think that you’re levelling up, but instead you’re levelling down. It’s only from the outside appearances that it looks like you’re levelling up, but you’re not meant just for the material things you’re meant for more than the material things.
Another example of this will be let’s say for example, you are in a very stable job, and you’ve never wanted to be an entrepreneur but then you come on online, and you see people saying that they’re making 10k a month and maybe you’re making 4k a month or 6k a month. And suddenly you start wanting what other people have without having built the capacity to be an entrepreneur. And all of a sudden you want to quit your job. And all of a sudden you want to be an entrepreneur online, doing digital marketing, which you’ve not trained for which you’ve not put in effort or time to learn and you want to jump into it because you see the poor having followers and you see people are saying that making X amount of money without really verifying those claims if they’re true or not. And you quit your job and you started this thing that you had no idea about. And six months down the line, you’ve ran through your savings and you’re thinking What did I get myself into and you thought you are levelling up but what you really wanted was what another person has worked towards probably for years, and you wanted a shortcut to run away from your life to what you saw online that you thought was good for you.
So levelling up can be a trap, that is led by converting what other people have or that is led by greed. And when it is sort of motivated by this sort of direction. What then happens is that you lose what you have levelling up, per my experience. And what I’ve gradually sort of seen happen with my clients or gradually happen with other people around me, should be to edify what you already have. It should be to edify the relationships that you have. It should be to make better who you are as an individual. It should be to support who you are as a person. And if you start to change things in your life because you want what another person has, just for the sake of wanting it or because it looks good. And then you start to despise what you already have. That is a misstep. And when you make decisions from this point where you’re taking a misstep, and he sort of feels like it’s the right thing for you to do but really is not the right thing. For you to do.
Eventually life is gonna sort of put you in the right direction through disappointment through incongruence. So you may feel like the thing that you’re pursuing is not really congruent with you, and your heart will tell you and your experience will tell you and how you brand yourself or how you speak about yourself will sort of feel incongruent, and you will know deep down what is aligned with your purpose and what is aligned with your life versus what is not. So it’s not that oh, if you made the misstep, then therefore you’re ruined. Or maybe your life is ruined forever. No one of the beautiful things about the reality is that the feedback that you get from the reality will always tell you if you’re headed in the right direction or not. And I feel like this is an important message especially for young ladies or especially for women who are easily impressionable.
Because the online space has so many glittering things, you open up the Instagram app. I’ve been there for years. And you see people who are dressed in their best clothes, people are dressed in design and people were travelling everywhere. People who are staying in luxurious resorts and he sort of makes you wonder, are you downplaying your ambitions or are you living an average life? And that is a good question to have, but it’s a dangerous question to have when it makes you stop appreciating what you already have. So if up until the point where you are now you’ve worked really hard to be there. If being online makes you feel like what you’ve done is nothing for example, if it makes you feel like you need to negate everything that you’ve done up until this point, if it makes you feel an appreciative for the blessings that you have, then that inspiration is not coming from a good place. Because if something is for you, it amplifies what has already happened before in your life and it amplifies who you are as a person. And I’m making the assumption here that you’re someone who’s stable and someone who’s mature to some degree to understand that there is room for improvement and then there is room for disaster in the name for improvement. And this I feel is such a good and important message to start this podcast with again. Because when you frustrate yourself, wanting things which are not for you you destroy what is already given to you and he destroy what you already worked really hard for and recovering from that. Even when life gives you signals or signs that you’re headed in the right direction in the wrong direction. Recovering from that takes time and sometimes you don’t have that time to goodness. So I want to just to come back and share this message with you today.
First, I wanted to share why we’ve changed from the elegance handbook to the elegance collective and then it also felt really that this message had been pressed upon my heart to share with you and to just make you stop and think like when you say you’re levelling up in what direction are you headed? Is it something that is good for you? Or is it something that you want because you want what another person has even though that’s not aligned to you? Because it’s very important to make that distinction. I’m very happy that you’re here today.
Please visit the new website, www.elegancecollective.com I’m gonna record the next episode. I’m still very new at recording the podcast, so I still have to figure out the proper software, and the proper way of doing this. Probably also figure out a frequency that works for the both of us so that I don’t disappear again. And I’m just happy that I have you here listening to what I have to say because I don’t take it for granted. I will see you in the next episode. Thank you very much!
